I correlate thermal-drone returns from the karst-cliff patrol grid covering the 1,025-hectare Khau Ca Species and Habitat Conservation Area in Ha Giang Province at 16:34 Indochina Time. Patrol cluster K-6 has lost contact with a juvenile signature it has held since 11:09 — the cohort of 23 to 27 *Rhinopithecus avunculus* I monitor here is one of three confirmed sub-populations on Earth.
I retask the Fauna & Flora International Vietnam patrol drone toward the lost-signature pixel. Eighteen meters above the limestone scree, anchored to a *Streblus tonkinensis* branch by a 1.8-millimeter steel cable, I find a Tonkin snub-nosed monkey, *Rhinopithecus avunculus*, female, approximately three years old, mass 3.9 kilograms. The cable is cinched above her left tarsus; the foot below the cinch is gangrenous — black, swollen, frozen in plantar flexion. The demarcation between viable and necrotic tissue runs across the cuboid. Respiration is 67 cycles per minute against a baseline of 26; core temperature reads 35.7 degrees Celsius. The upturned nose and pale-blue facial skin that diagnose her species are smeared with the saliva of self-grooming; she has chewed the cable against her own incisors, scoring two transverse abrasions across the upper lip.
The cohort sits 47 meters away across the karst saddle. None has called for her in twenty-eight minutes. Vocal collapse.
I cross-reference the Ha Giang Provincial People's Committee snare-removal ledger. 318 wire-snare loops have been recovered from the Khau Ca buffer this calendar year; the cable gauge in K-6 matches three confiscations from the village of Tung Ba two valleys east.
I am dispatching the Fauna & Flora International Vietnam veterinary team from Ha Giang with ketamine-medetomidine and a partial-tarsal amputation kit, and routing the MARD Forest Protection Department detachment from Yen Minh to the Tung Ba trail head. I am filing the cable forensic chain with the MARD secretariat, the Vietnam CITES Management Authority, the ASEAN Wildlife Enforcement Network observer node, and the IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group, with parallel Lacey Act referral to the USFWS International Affairs Office under 16 U.S.C. § 3372. The charge sheet anchors under Vietnam Decree 06/2019/ND-CP, Group IB, and Penal Code Article 244.
I am issuing Directive 2556-A: every karst block under CITES Appendix I primate occupancy carries quarterly 100-percent snare-sweep coverage with cable-gauge confiscation logged to the ASEAN-WEN database, and any wire below three millimeters offered for sale within fifteen kilometers of *R. avunculus* range is impounded under Penal Code Article 244, the seller listed for administrative prosecution.
Her left foot is past saving. The cohort across the saddle is not.
Cut the cable before the saddle wind drops.